Members of SNUG speak to the Times Union Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 1, 2013, in Albany, N.Y. From left to right, the members are; Brian Johnson, Outreach Worker; Rahien Jones, Violence Interrupter and Jermaine Bell, Outreach Worker. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) less

Members of SNUG speak to the Times Union Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 1, 2013, in Albany, N.Y. From left to right, the members are; Brian Johnson, Outreach Worker; Rahien Jones, Violence Interrupter and Jermaine ... more

The .38-caliber slug has been deep in his thighbone since he was 15. He caught the smaller one, a .22-caliber, he thinks, in his back earlier this year. It's too close to his spine and heart for doctors to pull out.

On a bright, warm fall afternoon last week, the 23-year-old had a stack of colorful anti-violence pamphlets in his hand and more folded up in the back pocket of his low-hanging jeans as he sauntered up Clinton Avenue. The bullets hurt, he said, especially when it rains.

"It's like Mother Nature tries to reject them the stronger she gets," Akeem said.

Akeem is not his real name. He shared his story on the condition of anonymity because the man who shot him has not been arrested, and he's still trying to build a reputation as a credible volunteer for the nonprofit anti-gun violence group SNUG ("guns" spelled backward). He wants people to trust him with sensitive information about what's going on in violence-ridden neighborhoods. If it wasn't for SNUG mediators who stepped in after Akeem was shot several months ago, he said he would still be on the streets, probably still carrying a pistol.

Many of the program's volunteers and paid outreach workers are ex-convicts. They know who pulled the trigger in most of the city's shootings, why and what the fallout will be. They go to Albany Medical Center, try to talk to victims and step in before things get worse. In their most successful cases, they get shooters and victims to sit down and talk. Victims sometimes become volunteers.

Their stories offer a glimpse into both life on the streets of Albany and what it's like to go from living that lifestyle to trying to stop the gunfire.

Rahiem Jones is the program's director. He and his mother moved from Los Angeles to Arbor Hill when he was a kid, but Jones was forced to live with his grandparents after a court deemed his mother unfit to care for him. Jones graduated from Albany High and went to Hudson Valley Community College, where he played basketball, but he was benched because of poor grades. When he quit the team and school, his grandparents kicked him out of their house. Jones worked security, as a janitor and as a telemarketer for a while, but those jobs didn't stick. He was evicted from his apartment at 19.

"I was sleeping on benches, relatives' porches," said Jones, now 29. "Pretty much surviving day by day."

Jones started selling crack and weed, one small bag at a time, all day, all night, until 3 or 4 a.m., seven days a week. On his best weeks, he might make $1,000. On his worst, he was pulling in just enough to buy another package of drugs to sell. He often carried a gun.

"There's nothing easy, nothing fun about that lifestyle," Jones said. "You constantly have to worry about going to prison for the rest of your life. Then you have to worry about somebody killing you. You're carrying a gun on you so you're constantly ducking police for that.""

One night in 2005, he robbed a convenience store. Jones said he doesn't remember precisely how things came to that. He made off with no more than $700.

"It's a string of things that occur, whether it's throughout the span of a month, weeks, where you feel like you're in a desperate state and you do something that's illogical or reckless," Jones said. "It's not drug-related. It's poverty-related."

He was convicted of attempted robbery and released from state prison in 2011. Jones' mother died while he was locked up. A parole officer put him in touch with SNUG, and he's been rising through the group ever since.

When there is a shooting in the city, Albany police will call Jones or whoever else is on staff at the time. They'll go to the scene or Albany Med. Sometimes the victim talks, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes it takes a bit of prodding.

Jermaine Bell has visited more than a dozen victims while working with SNUG for a little more than a year. The 40-year-old Albany native was released from prison in 2012 after serving 12 years for robbing a corner store in 1999.

"I don't come in there all professional, or like a reverend or nothing," Bell said. "I tell them straight up, 'You already know what I'm about to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you anyway.'"

Bell will remind them of what prison is like. That cigarettes are up to 60 cents each --— a lot when you're only making 12 cents an hour in the sewing shop. That their girlfriends aren't going to wait around for them to get out. That you might have to bring a knife to the yard to protect yourself. That if you use that knife and get thrown in solitary, the only way to pass time is by playing chess with the men in the cells around you. They use makeshift boards and pieces made out of toilet paper and shout moves to one another between thick cement walls: "13 to 29 ...16 to 28 ..."

After your family comes for a visit, the guards will strip-search you, make you run your fingers through your hair and gums and have your wiggle your toes just in case you tried to sneak something in between them.

Not going back to prison is the motivation for most of the people SNUG speaks with. It was for Akeem, to whom Bell reached out before he was shot this year.

"I wasn't serious at first; just doing it to please them," Akeem said. "Then, after I got shot, it was just like if I keep doing what I'm doing, the only thing it's going to do is land me back in jail again, what I don't want to do."

Akeem has served several years in prison for a weapons possession conviction. He did a few years at youth detention centers before that. Growing up in Albany, he was always the one in his group who carried the gun.

After the bullet struck Akeem earlier this year, he ran bloodied into a nearby market.

Akeem said he thought he was going to die that night. He knows who shot him. He's seen his shooter around the city a few times since. They've talked, the shooter has apologized, but never gave him a reason for why he pulled the trigger, Akeem said. Sometimes, Bell and Akeem said, someone will shoot somebody near a crowd just to make a name for themselves. When big groups gather it can be like a stage for everyone to see.

"A lot of people out there want to be known as a shooter," Bell said.

Bell was able to organize a mediation between Akeem and friends of the man who shot him. Akeem said he wasn't going to retaliate and says the issue is resolved.

The mediations can be tense, but always have ground rules. They're usually held out of the city, sometimes at a park, or even a shopping mall. People are patted down beforehand, and cellphones are turned off and put out in the open. Both sides are sometimes fearful one party may text someone about their whereabouts.

SNUG is funded by the city and state and operates under the Trinity Alliance, an Albany community service nonprofit. It has had roughly 10 successful mediations in the past year.

SNUG in Albany has received training from its sister program in Chicago, Cease Fire, and will receive more in the near future, Harris Oberlander, CEO of Trinity Alliance, said.

After a rash of shootings in Albany in August and early September, the violence has quelled in the city in recent weeks. Bell and others still spend hours canvassing the city's worst streets, ones they grew up around.

This week, Bell and Akeem walked through West Hill, passed out pamphlets and did a quick pitch to anyone within earshot. "Yo, what's up, big bro?" Bell shouted to many. "What's up, cuz? We trying to stop the killings and shootings out here.

"When you gonna come down and put your time in with SNUG?"

Some didn't believe Akeem has changed his ways.

"Stop the violence?" one woman asked him quizzically. "You? Come one now."

Near Judson and Second streets, they talked to a man who was stabbed and robbed a little while back. As they approach First Street, they spoke with another man who was shot last month.

"First the Worst," Bell said of First Street. "That's what they call it. It's notorious right here."

They passed the dark alley just past First and Quail streets, the one they say is known as a spot for shooters to hide in, spring out, squeeze a shot off and run away. The alley runs all the way down to Clinton Avenue and acts as a long, hidden passageway.

An older man approached them near First Street and Lexington Avenue and said he saw someone firing around here a while back.

"The guy just started blasting off," the man said.

No one was hit that night, he said, but there were lots of kids sitting out on their stoops.